Crap 'hobbies' you had as a child.

[DrMadelineMaxwell]

I used to go around the village where I used to live with my notebook and pen and write down number plates. I can still recall my Dad's car plate.

This is a cause of much mirth to my kids who have clearly never known the heady excitement of a long sunday afternoon pre internet days.

Collected wade whimseys, and did the I spy books. Also collected the smutty joke post cards from the seaside even though I didn’t understand them.

Had a huge collection of beer mats that my dad and his mates brought home for us. The local bully heard me say “bloody hell” one day and blackmailed most of them from me with a threat to tell my mother. Finally worked up the courage to tell her myself because he was demanding a particular favourite that week. Still remember the satisfaction of watching him tell my mother what I’d said, and her replying “so what”

This thread is an absolute classic!

My hobbies were collecting postcards, collecting bus tickets (just ordinary ones, not special ones or anything), making rose petal scent.

I used to make lists of horse names for all the imaginary horses I didn't own and couldn't ride. My friends did the same but some of them actually had horses.

I grew up in central London, and was allowed to travel on the Tube by myself very young (age 7 for 3 stops/1 change to school, 10 for everywhere else). As a teenager I used to entertain myself by visiting every tube station on every line and on the map. There were categories - with/without overground stations, with/without the Jubilee Line (very new at the time). My friend and I spent hours looking at the underground map working out the quickest way of doing it.

We lived in LONDON FFS!!!!! Did we seriously have nothing better to do?

My dad also maintained that I had been to every museum in London by the time I was 5.

@arhhhhhnofreeusernames did your font book have a dark blue cover? If so I think I had the same one - also bought from the school book club. My favourite was the Art Deco font.

Brilliant thread.

I remember practising tennis in the road aged about 8 for a whole day, seriously convinced I would be doing myself out of Wimbledon chances otherwise (I didn't even play tennis as a sport or anything)

I wanted so much to do tap dance but my mum couldn't be bothered, I really wanted the clacky patent shoes too. My mum told me that "apparently" the "top" tap dancers all learned in plimsolls I had plimsolls for PE, so I spent hours trying to teach myself tap but obviously the rubber soles chafed on the concrete flags a lot so it didn't work and I couldn't help thinking it was harder in plimsolls than any other shoes and maybe Mum was lying. I didn't say that to her though because in the 70s you didn't accuse your Mum of lying if you had any sense....

I had a walking stick and used to buy small badges to nail on to it whenever I visited anyway. My mum and Gran had them too . I still have it .
I was obsessed with lying on the floor and imaging the ceiling as the floor and trying to decide where I would put the furniture.
I had some Peanuts, as in Charlie Brown, books of facts. I loved them and spent hours drawing and copying the writing and making the exact same book 😒.
My mum had Kays catalogue and I used to look through it, I had to pick only one thing from each page, I used to spend hours deciding.

Me and my sisters used to sit on the shed roof for hours and hammer nails into the fence behind. We'd then jump off and try to land on the tiniest cushion ever.

We would also try and get our cat to sit in a wicker cookery basket and haul him from the ground up to the bedroom window. Luckily he wasn't stupid enough to stay in there!

Ohh, I've got so many of these-
I used to design houses and collected house plans. Still really love a house plan. Would also send off for brochures of very expensive houses until my mum got one too many phone calls asking when she would like to view them.
Also the Argos catalogue - I would fully furnish an imaginary house down to the teaspoons and work out the cost.
Would collect those dolls from countries that you had been to - didn't go abroad very often so I only had a flamenco doll and a beefeater.
The manky rose water thing - never smelt nice.
Would dry flowers.
Used to do a fair amount of quilling (rolling tiny strips of paper into shapes to make patterns)
Did dried flower arrangements.
Stenciled the house (Had very nice parents - there is no way in hell that I would let my kids do this)

My mum used to despair of me, once I hit 17 she would offer to give me £20 so that I could go to the pub and my dad would offer to come and get me any time I wanted but I always refused to go as I was underage and it was illegal. I was soooo boring it was untrue, it is amazing I had any friends.

Made a woven basket from some sort of kit. It's skewed. Imagine the worst knitting but in some sort of flexi reed. My mother displays things in it. I tried hiding it when I visit.

She'll tell a visitor I made it. Then point to some of my brother's cups for all round sporting excellence.

The pencil sharpener collection though - that continues to grow.

This thread has given me back so many lovely childhood memories! My parents were a bit crap and I have only ever looked back with contempt, but actually there were some really fab bits too!

I just remembered spending a lot of time trying to entice next doors cat to live with us.

And digging for treasure - am so jealous of the pp who's Grandad buried pennies and gave her a metal detector. That's the stuff of dreams!!

I used to record my voice. 😂

I would sit for hours with a tape recorder recording pretend radio shows on blank cassette tapes. I always used to get the Mandy and Judy annuals for Christmas and the comics every week so I used to record the stories like plays doing a different voice for each character.

It's a good job that there was no YouTube/TikTok back then as I probably would have posted some shite on those! 🙈

My sisters and I used to take it in turns to see how many steps up the stairs we could go and still jump to the bottom when at my Grandad's house.

And at my Grandpa's on a Sunday we always played under the dining room table with my cousins, pretending the table was a ship etc each week.

I used to make perfume. Water and rose petals. Tried several recipes but it always smelt like a pond after a few days. I could never work out why.

A friend and I also ran a woodlouse zoo...

Oh and at guide camp they always made us whittle. So many pointy sticks. So little to do with them.

Also spent ages trying to build my own hut after reading 'Jennings' Little Hut'. I was trying to balance bamboo sticks over branches for the roof but they kept rolling off

Shrinking the crisp packets was easy....until we got our first fan oven. Then it blew them all over the place until I worked out a way of 'sticking' them to the oven sheet.

I loved my teeny tiny crisp packets.

We made ladybird towns out of piles of mown grass. I remember dozens of 🐞 inhabiting these structures. How did we find so many? Were there more around in the 1970s?

We made ladybird towns out of piles of mown grass. I remember dozens of 🐞 inhabiting these structures. How did we find so many? Were there more around in the 1970s?

There was a plague of lady birds in the 70s, 76 I think, the year of 5he hot summer.

You lot are brilliant. I want to go on a night out with you all!

I daren't share mine in case I'm the one where everyone goes, "woah, now..."

Come on now, @LittleMissLumpy
Share with the group. We won't judge....much.

Fine. This may be outing.

I had a nest of ladybirds above my curtains. I used to pick up the dead ones, give them names and place them in a tiny ladybird graveyard (piece of cotton wool) complete with tiny paper headstones.

When my parents took me to the pub, I was the one in the pub playground with a giant leather holdall filled with 'dressing up' clothes and hand-made paper 'badges' desperately trying to recruit other children into a shit version of Brownies.

For perspective, I also had a small suitcase packed in case our house burnt down. It had a pair of pants and socks for every member of the family in it, packets of salt and sugar nicked from cafes, and a duvet cover because if we were homeless I was sure we could turn the duvet cover into clothes.

Awwww....I love the thought of the tiny paper gravestones. :)

I was a member of the Roland Rat fan club I also loved my collection of pet rocks (they were a thing!) and air plants...

I was a bit obsessed with graves in general. As an adult, I find them interesting places filled with history, but as a child, I was just morbid!